GW is arguing that this is one reason that all Whites need to vote Republican, but I don’t think anything would make me vote Republican, not even the craziest PC nuts on the Left. Some things are just non-negotiable, and for me, I never vote Republican. The vote was 4-4, with Justice Kennedy casting the deciding vote.

Kennedy is not so conservative as everyone says he is. He was appointed as a hard rightist, but he has drifted left with the years. He is actually a pretty reasonable justice, and I have a lot of respect for him. He ruled properly in this case.

In recent years, Kennedy has been spending a lot of time in Europe, where he has been studying trends in European law. Kennedy is hitching aboard a very liberal train of US legal thought that seeks advice for US legal decisions in decisions overseas. Of course, this drives the rightwingers stark raving bats as it conjures up images of loss of sovereignty and One World Government and all that. But as a Leftist, of course I support international bodies, provided they are progressive of course.

GW goes on to describe Obama’s presidency as a nightmare and hopes it will end by 2012. Not so fast there, buddy. Truth is that this last election was a sea change.

The Right is on its way out. The Republicans are going to lose hard again in 2012. The only way they can avoid it is by moving significantly to the Left, and they are too stubborn and ideological these days to do that. All of the liberal Republicans and other sane people have been leaving the party in droves. There are only a few left up in the northeast.

This is now the party that cheers on murderers of abortionists, peddles insane conspiracy theories, feeds the lunatic, racist and anti-Semitic Right, and generally is moving full-blast to the utterly deranged ultra-Right. Sure, that will get some abortionists gunned down and some Holocaust Museums shot up, but it won’t win an election.

These guys just don’t get it. At the very moment they need to move Left, they’re going so far Right, they’re heading off the cliff. The Democrats are a much more flexible party and have moved hard to the Right for almost 20 years now, but the Republicans are too ideological to do that, anyway, the trajectory is all in the wrong direction.

Anyway, this was a good decision. In a way, seeing affirmative action go down saddens me, because it will increase problems for US Blacks. The upshot will probably be Blacks falling further behind in many ways. That will just make them even more mad, and it won’t be good for social peace. But this case was outrageous, and it really made me angry.

I wish we liberals would quit pushing this affirmative action nonsense. We don’t have the public with us on this, and the Right is just using it as a club to pummel us over the head. Indeed, 65% of the American public sided with the tragic White firefighters in this case. It’s like gay marriage. In other words, loser.

The Republicans love to push loser issues, lately to their detriment. Let them continue that stupidity. But we can’t get away with it so easily. Let it rest. Drop the affirmative action crap. We don’t have the numbers, the public hates it, and it’s morally questionable anyway.

12 responses to “Supreme Court Rules In Favor of Frank Ricci and New Haven Firefighters”

I wonder if the end of affirmative action actually would be bad for blacks. Maybe it would be in the short term somewhat, but it wouldn’t be the end of the world.

I think about my father, who came of age during the Depression in the rural South: the only affirmative action that existed was for whites. And yet my dad managed, in an environment that could be incredibly hostile to black males, to remain gainfully employed for almost his entire life, avoid prison, pay his taxes, and raise kids that he also kept out of trouble.

Wow, that’s great, cursed. So you’re not really a racist at all, at least in that sense. White racists just pretty much hate all Blacks period. You clearly don’t. If they act good, you respect them and treat them well.

That’s the only kind of “anti-racism” I’m arguing for on this blog. I’m not arguing for PC nonsense at all.

Also, it’s part my own hangup, because I have very high morals. Too high. So high, I feel guilty most of the time. So I’m not into hating most people on a personal level just based on their ethnicity. Exceptions for Gypsies! I do have these thoughts sometimes, and I feel terrible about them. So when you meet someone of another race, especially if they are pretty much ok, you ought to be straight up with them.

I even don’t think I should think hateful thoughts about people based on their ethnicity or whatever. That’s kind of hard for me, because my neighborhood is overrun by illegals, and it’s kind of hard to drive down the street and feel warm and fuzzies about them. But I even feel bad even thinking bad thoughts about these people as I drive by them.

So when I’m bashing away at racism on here, I’m really talking about my own personal demons in a lot of ways and my own excessively high morals.

The end of AA would be good for Blacks. When I hear that a Black went to a college other than a junior one, I immediately think he or she was placed a tier or two or three above his or her head because of AA. It seems to me that if they were to end discrimination in admits, Blacks would not be considered AA babies & Whites could be judged fairly.

The Obamas and Sotomayor are geniunely smart people who worked hard for what they wanted. It saddens me to see so many people twisting the purpose of Affirmative Action and using it to discredit the legitimate accomplishments of people. AA does not get you good grades in school, it does not get you elected to offices by popular vote and it does not make up for incompetence.
People often don’t realize their hidden biases, and when your school/company make-up does not accurately represent the amount of QUALIFIED [key word] candidates available that is a problem. When you look at 20 QUALIFIED applicants- 10 white, 5 Black and 5 Hispanic- and you only hire the white males, yes there is something wrong with that picture. The USA is a diverse country, and every environment needs diversity to contune to grow and prosper. When you have nothing but people who all think the same look the same and act the same you lose progress. And yes, it can go both ways- minorities shouldn’t be closed off to this fact either.
I did not agree with the position the SC took here, mainly because it didn’t disparately promote anyone. They decided to find another way to determine who they would promote to ensure there was no disparate impact and there’s nothing wrong with that. Sometimes you need to check yourself. They could have done a better job, but then again shoulda coulda woulda but didn’t.
I’ll stop here, this isn’t my blog ;-)

Obviously, real discrimination needs to be actively combated. With so many places bending over backwards for diversity goals and whatnot, I don’t think there’s a lot of discrimination against Blacks anymore these days in schools and workplaces.

I beg to differ. I work for a huge Global company yet we still find there are minorities [tech female, black, asian] that are being judged more harshly than their white counterparts. There are several cases where two people do identical work, yet for some reason the manager wants to give the minority a “below expectation” or simple “satisfactory” while giving the other an “Exceeds”. It may not happen openly, but implicit association is still there and removing the tools to combat it legally put minorities at risk. Check out Implicit Association Testing by Harvard- they have shown that white people typically prefer other white people, where people of other minorities typically equal out across the board OR themselves prefer whites.
This doesn’t mean people are racist, but they still have hidden biases that when left unchecked will return us to the Good Old Boy days where only my buddies can work with me.

Yeah, I am sorry that is still going on. But this disparate impact stuff has just got to go. It’s just ridiculous. I don’t know what to do to remedy ongoing discrimination laws, but present anti-discrimination laws ought to do just fine. Affirmative action is getting ridiculous.

Out of 118 participants, 59 actually passed the test, 27 of them African American. The city had 15 slots for promotions and the union decided to promote the top 15 scores. The highest African American ranked 21st.

Mr Ricci took a leave of absence for 6 months to prepare for the exam. Who performed his firefighter duties while he was studying? The African American who scored 21st?

No other industry promotes based on test scores alone. Leadership skills, time in service, peer evaluations, accommodations, etc should weigh just as equally as test scores. Could anyone imagine that a rookie of one year is able to ace an exam and be promoted over a 10 year vet? Which would you trust to save your family? The criteria for promotion should have been to simply pass the test, along with other mitigating factors.